The Friendly Visitor Program brings a feeling of community to LGBTQ+ seniors where they live – in their own homes, retirement communities or assisted living facilities.  As a Friendly Visitor volunteer, you may be the only person with whom the participant can openly share their life as an LGBTQ+ person.

Lavender Seniors’ Friendly Visitor Program matches volunteers with LGBTQ+ elders who are somewhat isolated and sometimes facing health challenges.  This includes LGBTQ+ seniors who feel isolated living in hetero-focused retirement facility or with family who are not LGBTQ+ friendly. Senior LGBTQ+ adults often become isolated from family and friends as they age and face considerable challenges as compared to the general population.

• They are 2 times more likely to live alone
• They are 2 times more likely to be single
• They are 4 times less likely to have adult children
• They are much more likely to be estranged from their families

During non-pandemic time spans, volunteers serve as hospitality agents providing in person visits, transportation to appointments, or shopping assistance.  Volunteers provide friendship and companionship through reminiscence, sharing available resources or through activities such as walking partnership, gaming competition, puzzle-ing, sharing music or simply providing a listening ear.

The objective of this very special service is to prevent and relieve isolation and loneliness by providing companionship and matching seniors with a screened, trained volunteer who may share some similar interests or background or may just want to get to meet someone new.

During this period of pandemic concern, we at Lavender Seniors are extremely mindful of supporting a shelter-in-place environment for our vulnerable senior population and limit our contact to providing reassuring phone calls and wellness checks, providing resources information, opportunities for virtual events and training classes, education, community news, as well as media support.

We encourage our volunteers to create social networks with our seniors.  By helping to build networks of support, we are better able to support LGBTQ seniors to ‘age in place’ and improve their quality of life.

Volunteer and senior matches are based on shared interests, geography, volunteer availability and personality as much as possible.

Volunteers do not provide services that require a special license such as medical administration, fiduciary services, nor house cleaning, personal care, cooking, or laundry services.

At Lavender Seniors we strive to build a community whose clients and volunteers support one another.  Our goal is to alleviate the feelings of loneliness and isolation that many of us experience as we get older.  The Friendly Visitor Program reduces these risks and provides a safety net when a crisis occurs such as a fall, injury, illness, loss of housing, loss of a loved one, or other situations that can put a vulnerable senior in harm’s way both mentally and physically.  Lavender Seniors volunteers are able to intervene and refer the client to other support services therefore creating a ‘safety net’ of communication.

We are widely inclusive and warmly welcome those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning, or those who don’t identify with any labels at all. Our allies who are supportive of our mission and are encouraged to join us.

We thank all those who care about seniors and wish to join our program. Together we can make a difference in the lives of isolated LGBTQ+ seniors.